Classic (Not Progression) Server Rule Set; For the Fans!

Which game, which servers have you seen IP locked?

nobody would pay to do this. many eq servers would fail or die if you had such a policy in place.

First order of business!

Restore original zones. Freeport, East and West Commonlands, HHP Nektulos.. .etc.
Rename sylvan bat to a bat
Spell scrolls no longer stackable.
Stacksizes restored on all other items to 20
Various random tradeskill loot (brick of crude bronze etc.) removal
Double check / repair old tradeskill path.
Delete Tribute Master
Delete Soulbinder.
Delete Rodent
Delete Exterminator
Change graphic of (Race) skeleton to original.
Repair Crushbone orcs to the original glory instead of the nasty green.

Just for starters.

An old game. The game was always IP locked and people were fine with it.

I'm really curious about the game, mind to share the name?
Thanks in advance. <3

PLEASE PLEASE SOE. I've been to your SOE lives, your EQ fan faires, been playing eq forever. SO MANY of us will pay the 15 a month again if you give us the progression again.

Normally if the said game gets mentioned the post gets deleted.

There are usually a lot of good ideas, followed by one overkill silly request to destroy the popular boxing play style and restricting to one ip.

Going to LDoN and GoD would be alright with me, but OoW is where I would draw the line.

As I've said in other threads, I dislike the idea of IP checks (yes, I read that part you said about IP exceptions).

They'd restrict families who play together (as well as make them feel unwelcome) and I don't believe that doing away with boxing would promote community. You're always going to have people who don't like grouping with others. Banning boxing won't change that, nor is it going to make someone with poor social skills be friendlier.

I also don't see why banning box is so important to you. You guys managed just fine having boxers around in 1999. They didn't destroy the community back then.

Story: I remember a time I died in the Howling Stones during classic era. I realized that there were some other toons in the zone. One was a monk. I asked him if he could drag me. Not only did he fetch my corpse, but he ran his boxed cleric and his shaman to rez and rebuff me. Then he asked me if I would like to group with him and if I had any other friends who wanted to join.

If you want to have a server that revolves around cooperation, how about you try to be proactive? You could do things like create a raiding alliance with other guilds, host group hunting nights, or do roleplay events. That's going to promote community much more than calling for banning boxing and alienating people.

No boxing allowed and you will have direct competition with that free you-know-what-project thing and the players over there pretend to hate SoE... so to what "crowd" do you try to appeal here?
(Also this project is to my guess this "successfull IP blocked game" the guy above was going on about - which going by numbers i can't denie either.
I have been playing about every MMO out there since Meridian 59 - only skiped Ultima Online - and i have yet to come across an IP block game to prevent boxing... hell... there is not even that many games around where boxing would give you an advantage as big as in EQ.
And runing checks on what? As if the SoE staff had the manpower to chase down boxing players as the "staff" on that "project"-you-know-what thing does going by their forums.
Have people report them? Could be abused to harass normal players - just to much potential for more harassment than it would do any good, not to mention the ressources it would eat on SoE's end... not happening, but ofc you can state that you wish for it.)

No one these days can be arsed to be lfg for 3-4h of their "free evening after work time" unless they are unemployed and so on and forth of course - that has been stated many times in serval threads around many different MMO forums by now and it's something i can agree with - thats most likely why MMOs changed to "solo to max lvl and then raid" systems.
When you have a Job and a life to deal with, classic EQ just is not for you... unless you take up a box or two to get some progress done at all during your off-time.

Yes, i prefer grouping over boxing as well - the social aspect after all, fond memories of my first group in SolB Royals, but removing the option to box completly would also make this "new" server not classic either and most likely drive away a lot of perfectly fine people who may just use their boxes to bridge the time until they find a "normal" group to play with or exchange their boxes for other people.
People boxed in classic as well and it still worked out.

However, going truh all the "recent" threads in the TLP section - if i was SoE i would stay far far away from a new TLP by now as it would most likely introduce more hassle and stress to the team than it can use right now - as sad as it sounds.
People already flaming each other indirectly on the forums over still existing servers, hoping to gain SoE's appeal for them to be merged-away or shut down or whatever just to free up ressources for a new TLP.
Yet the ressources SoE is short on to open a new TLP is not hardware but manpower and i don't think they would hire a bunch of new people just for that - not right now.
Not to mention all those extra wishes they couldn't implement already on the last batch of TLPs because of the one or other reason... we don't know how their system works so we don't even know if it's true what they say or not but thats not even up to us to decide.

By now all people here can do is "beg" and "vote with the wallet" and both options only work if there is a really large amount of people visibly doing this - as in statistics for SoE to verify and show to the management.

Yep, we would be happy with a lot of that (boxing prohibited aside ) - but i think most of us are a bit stuck in the past (me included, which is why i'm simply not playing any games right now) and i have lost hope for SoE to change anything at all regarding this.
Don't get me wrong, i don't wanna blame or talk SoE bad here ... just trying to say - i can see where they are coming from and after following these forums for a while and SoE in general... yea well...

It's been a cool ride SoE, TDS wasn't for me as already the last bunch of expansions was not but i think the time for me to move on has come, gona let the old memories be what they are - memories, good ones.
Back to real life with me to actually spend my time on doing something meaningfull instead of wasting away more of my limited life time to chase a dream that won't come true.

Don't hate me... just felt like playing Captain Obvious.

Even as someone that does not box, I find it rude to try and take away from what others find enjoyable. I also think their policy on names is absurdly silly. Who cares if someone wants to name their character Miller Lite. It doesn't hurt anybody.

I know which game Terethian is referring to and I disagree with people who are coming in and saying having a similar policy will help the community and make reputation matter. I searched through threads on the other game's forums and I see:

people complaining about how they couldn't get groups (even with the no-boxing rules in place)
people saying they were unjustly banned, because someone reported them as boxing to harass them
one guy saying he was offered a spot in a group and then before he could get to the group, someone rudely offered his slot to another person
and many rants about camp stealing, training, raid disputes, and childish behavior.

No boxing sure has made them think about their reputations, hasn't it? And it's sure guaranteed they get groups...

Now to get back on topic... I like a lot of the ideas in the thread (the no boxing suggestion aside). My favorite ones are classic models, EQ Mac client, classic sky, classic database, and bringing back the boats.

Speaking from my own experience, I have never had trouble getting a group in the other game and my class is not a holy trinity class either. allowing boxing would not be a deal breaker, but I really think it helps prevents camp lockdowns and adds to the social nature. Full groups of real people from about lv 10 to my current level of 47 have been a lot of fun. Testing for the boxing is easy via a series of rapid Simon says exercises.

I think a classic through GoD would be best though. It contains all level 65 content, and after God everything from my point of view sucked till Dodh bar the omm fight. As a grouper I could have hard Ldon gear, or as a raider getting to Ep is feasible for a moderate effort. Lots of decent content that us old timer actually WANT to play where the gear has relevance for our toons in the wider scheme of things. Playing progression on a live server is no fun as your toons accomplishments have no real value and lv 105s destroying raid targets in seconds are not fun.

My guess is that a classic through pop or classic through God server will have more long term support than EQNEXT disneyquest is going to get. That is just a personal guess.

It's easy to say what you just said. What is hard is making it resemble something useful. I am disabled, so won't pass the test. People go afk. People also get tired of stupid, vacuous, repetitive, nonsensical, and easily bypassed rote inflicted on them under the dubious assertion that only humans would be stupid enough to want to do this. And, of course, it just leads to automation which would mean that the humans get tired of proving they are humans over time, but the automated boxes do not.

IP address tests are just as useless. It removes groups of people from playing a game together on the grounds that it is a "social" game? Social games let people who know each other socially socialize together, even when they are 10' from each other. Obviously, they may well be more social than the person with a glorious unique IP address, but who never ventures out.

People will just go to games that are a whole lot less irritating, and actually understand what being social is all about. I met my wife in EQ over a decade ago. So, it was ok to socialize with each other before we were married, but not after when we suddenly committed the heinous crime of having the same IP address? Seriously?

And, ludicrously, we both box. And we socialize with other couples and single people who box, and we have RL friends who both box and do not box characters. But apparently "socialize" is a term that is regimented by arbitrary constraints such as unique IP addresses. Seriously?

Plus, there is no issue in solving this that can't be solved socially. You start up a conversation about wanting to do something in-game and are looking for others who don't box. Then all of you can meet up and go do something together.

You see how easy that is?

To me boxing can harmfully impact the game through kunark as a trained monkey boxing cleric ench monk could pretty much lock down any camp in the game at that point. Not being able to box means it takes at least three individuals to lock stuff down. As I say if I had to vote on boxing vs non boxing I would vote no, but if I lost the vote it would not stop me at least giving the server a go. I personally never encountered boxing till luclin as a lot of people did not have comps or connections that could handle it. Their general rule was that they dropped their shammy box for real players. My own feeling is that box teams who are out only for themselves ruin open world content and tarnish things for more benevolent boxers. As for Ip exemptions I know it works just fine as I got one for the other game when I play at my friends house. We were observed and tested and passed, then left alone. I guess I just see a system that in my own mind works well. I can solo when i want or group when i want to do something harder.

I have several comments about what you said.

1) One is anyone, not just a box team, can lock a camp down. A bard can do it kiting mass mobs. A druid can quad kite. A guild can come in and take over everything while they wait for enough people to log on so they can kill the raid boss. I've dealt with guilds who train mobs over groups camping in the zones, stall for time by kiting monsters around, and pulling from an exp group's camp. But because a guild coming in is more than three individuals, that I suppose makes it okay? The impression I get is that you dislike boxers because you had a bad experience with a box team who was "out only for themselves."

2) You say you want a server that goes up through GOD. GOD is disliked by many. If they were to do a server that ended with that expansion, I expect a lot of players would leave once you hit GOD, and you'd have a population drop. GOD combined with no boxing rules would not encourage fresh blood to come in, and then what state would your server be in?

3) Glad you're able to get a group in the other game. Are those other players guildies or close friends? Other people are not so fortunate. Example:

"This feels a lot like EQ was back in the day. I'm a good player. I'm friendly. I help people when I can. I always have LFG on, I'm always asking if anyone would like to group with me, yet EVERYWHERE I go generally people don't want to group. What is wrong here? Everquest is a game designed around playing with other people."

1 -Bard kiting is generally hated, but restricted to outdoors areas where there are few caster mobs so that narrows it down further. Quad kiting is not that much of an issue as the downtime is huge. Generally say a monk shaman duo for example would outperform a quad kiter in terms of exp and kill rate. It's more dungeon areas where boxing is problematic areas like shroom king in seb for example are perfectly possible with a cleric ench and monk/warrior and the a certain kinda player would lock it down constantly. I think on a pay to play server where it would require three individuals, such occurrences would be less likely to work in the long run. I don't dislike boxers, more I dislike things being oversimplified by being able to do everything yourself in a game that used to thrive on cooperation. Again I would not refuse to play on a boxing enabled server, I just find the interactive and even playing field more interesting. I have never had a bad run in with a box team as boxing to me really only effects the open world. I certainly dislike content catered to boxers as an individual player such content is rather dull, but this is another discussion.

2- a server to GoD is a decent idea as it gives those who have farmed time to death a chance to challenge themselves further. Most would probably raid till ikkinz and reroll or join the players who want GoD. Going up to GoD offers the players the greatest amount of content choice within the level 65 bracket. If you don't want GoD don't leave pop. If you want the very best items take a chance and challenge yourself. Having GoD would also mean bored high end players would be less likely to faceroll pop progression targets for their alts as tjey would have plenty to keep them occupied. The amount of work from uqua to tacvi is pretty excessive.

3- I guess my experience is different. I am however pretty proactive as a player. As a shaman I generally look for a monk my level and move from there. Can duo outside or take some easier dungeon camps, if more adventurers turn up the group grows and we move further in. I also stick to more popular areas unless I prearranged a group. If you do a good job people tend to ask you back and your network of friends increases and thus through meeting people and working together to help and get helped on quests a lot happens. My guild tends to be higher level than me and I refuse pl'ing as I like to forge my own path so most of my groups ate either random people or one rl friend.

the only problem is if they dont revert to old skill caps and ac values etc etc then GoD will be the same as it was on progression this time around, a joke and not a challenge.

That's what I would have hoped for is original caps and no ooc timer etc, to really experience how brutal it was!

No OOC regen is not a mechanic I'd want, but I could tolerate it (couldn't stand corpse runs, though, CRs would be a deal breaker for me, just too time consuming with my limited playtime). I like having mana be a resource you have to manage and I liked the group interaction that occurred during med breaks.